Jill Abramson

Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

​Jill Abramson​ succeeded Bill Keller as the executive editor of​​ The New York Times​ on Sept. 6, 2011, becoming the first woman to hold that position. ​ She left the pos​t on May 14, 2014. Ms. Abramson was previously the managing editor, a position she ​had ​held since 2003. ​ ​As managing editor, Ms. Abramson was one of Mr. Keller’s two top deputies overseeing the entire newsroom. When she was appointed executive editor, ​ Ms. Abramson said that as a born-and-raised New Yorker​ and considered being named ​ the top ​ editor of The Times to be like “ascending to Valhalla.”

“In my house growing up, The Times substituted for religion,” she said. “If The Times said it, it was the absolute truth.”

Ms. Abramson’s selection ​was something of a departure for The Times, an institution that has historically chosen executive editors who have ascended the ranks through postings in overseas bureaus and managing desks like Foreign or Metropolitan.​ Ms. Abramson came to The Times in 1997 from The Wall Street Journal, where she was a deputy bureau chief and an investigative reporter for nine years. She rose quickly at The Times, becoming Washington editor in 1999 and then bureau chief in 2000.

Mr. Keller asked her to be his managing editor in 2003 as he assembled a team he hoped would restore confidence in the paper after the Jayson Blair plagiarism scandal. Ms. Abramson had been part of a group of editors who clashed with Howell Raines, the previous ​executive editor who was forced out after Mr. Blair’s fraud was revealed.

In 2010, Ms. Abramson stepped aside temporarily from her day-to-day duties as managing editor to help run The Times’s online operations, a move she asked to make so she could develop fuller, firsthand experience with the integration of the digital and print staffs. ​